Students in North Carolina miss nearly 2 million school days due to suspension and expulsion. The state has the third-highest suspension rate in the country. And Hidden Voices, a non-profit group from Durham, is doing something about it.
“None of the Above,” a stage show coming to the Arts Center in Carrboro and the Stone Center on campus, examines these issues and more as part of a bigger problem known as the “school-to-prison pipeline.” The show is part of a larger project by the non-profit group that also includes a traveling exhibit and dramatic monologues.
“We came up with our own definition of the school-to-prison pipeline, which is the intersection of race, poverty, educational policies and incarceration here,” said Lynden Harris, the director of Hidden Voices.
The project started in 2010 when the Washington, D.C.-based Advancement Project came to Durham in hopes of furthering its grassroots movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. Organizations in the city connected Advancement Project with Hidden Voices and the seeds of “None of the Above” were sown.
“In 2010, I don’t know that I could have found anybody who had heard the term ‘school-to-prison pipeline,’” said Harris. “Now, if you talk to educators or attorneys, most of them have heard about it and are starting to understand some of the issues.”
Hidden Voices first identified stakeholders affected by the school-to-prison pipeline. These included attorneys, students, teachers and parents, among others. After identifying these groups as well as organizations specializing in each issue composing the pipeline, the group began gathering information to cobble together its project.
Kathy Williams, a lecturer for UNC’s Department of Dramatic Art, is the director of the staging, which is premised to resemble a live radio show.
“Over the past few years we talked to as many people as we could that were stakeholders in this issue,” Williams said. “What this format does is allow us to bring in many, many more of those voices than if we were just doing a traditional two or three character piece.”
The traveling exhibit, on display in the Union gallery until Sep. 30, uses seven desks designed to represent separate issues of the school-to-prison pipeline, ranging from police in schools to high-stakes testing and suspensions. It also includes photos of stakeholders, a crayon map of North Carolina and art incorporating facts and figures.
As an example of each piece’s relevance, the high-stakes testing desk includes various items involving the downsides of such exams. On the desk, student-written letters bemoan the pressures of the tests, while teacher testimonies associate the exams to poor instructional capabilities due to their weight in teacher and student evaluations.
Professor Melissa Miller of UNC’s School of Education — who specializes in education for students with learning and behavioral problems — said facets resembling those of high-stakes testing are part of a vicious cycle spurning the pipeline.
“We know that there is a connection between effective instruction and behavior. We know that if a student is not being taught effectively there’s less participation and engagement, so behavioral problems start to happen,” Miller said.
The behavioral problems resulting from poor instruction conversely cause problems with learning, Miller said. This causes even more behavioral problems in an unfortunate cycle that she said leads to suspensions, dropping out, incarceration, drug use and early pregnancy.
“There’s so many different angles you could look at it from — instruction is just one of them,” Miller said.
While the stage shows will end in October, the exhibit will travel throughout the state alongside readings of stakeholder-written monologues related to the project. The goal of the project, however, will entirely remain.
“You can’t choose good actions, you can’t make good policy until you understand reality on the ground,” Harris said. “And the only way we understand that isn’t through statistics, it’s through human stories.”
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